5 Ways SD-WAN Pays Dividends

SDWAN Pays Dividends for Financial Services Companies

Financial Services Firms Benefit Greatly from SD-WAN

It’s a fact. Technology has radically transformed the financial services industry. The acceleration of online banking has made in-person banking practices such as writing and cashing checks or making withdrawals and deposits nearly obsolete. Americans have become so comfortable with digital financial services that nearly two-thirds say they rarely use cash anymore. 

That said, many banks lack the network infrastructure necessary to adequately support the ongoing shift to digital operations. Almost half (45 percent) of banking executives say their organization relies on outdated technology, according to this 2022 Bank Director Technology Survey

Advanced SD-WAN solutions such as Aruba’s EdgeConnect platform can help financial services institutions modernize their technology infrastructure. With expanded connectivity options and enhanced application performance, SD-WAN creates the network flexibility, responsiveness and agility necessary to support an array of new digital services and close gaps in banking operations. 

The 5 Ways SD-WAN Pays

So, how does SD-WAN do it? Here are five ways EdgeConnect helps banks and other financial services organizations address common network challenges: 

Network Performance

EdgeConnect’s tunnel bonding and dynamic path control features aggregate multiple data transport links to ensure fast, reliable connectivity. Most SD-WAN solutions enable failover between transport types such as MPLS, broadband Internet, cellular and satellite communications. EdgeConnect combines multiple services to create a single, high-bandwidth logical link. This eliminates the cost and complexity of expensive private lines such as MPLS. 

Application Optimization

SD-WAN is an application-aware technology, which means it can identify and classify apps based on a variety of characteristics. It can then apply optimization techniques to ensure peak performance. It also improves the performance of cloud-based apps by reducing or eliminating the need to backhaul traffic from the cloud to the data center, which creates latency and reliability issues. 

Network Resilience

SD-WAN eliminates the conventional WAN hub-and-spoke architectural model in which all critical apps and services are deployed in the data center. Forcing branch offices and remote and mobile employees to connect to the main office for all of their Internet connectivity and application access wastes bandwidth and creates a single point of failure. 

Security

An app-aware firewall embedded in EdgeConnect provides stateful inspection of incoming data packets and blocks anything suspicious. Untrusted application traffic can be backhauled to the data center for advanced security inspection. Additionally, EdgeConnect uses standards-based encryption to secure traffic from end to end and ensures full authentication of all devices and users. 

Compliance

Financial services organizations spent nearly $275 billion in 2022 to ensure compliance with hundreds of federal, state, and industry regulations. This was up from $214 billion in 2020 and amounts to an 8% tax on financial services firms. Laws that are designed to protect consumers (a good thing) end up placing an onerous financial burden on companies (not a good thing). EdgeConnect’s zero-trust security features help protect customer data with encryption, network segmentation, automated policy management and more. This can help keep investments in compliance from turning into fines for compliance lapses.

How can EdgeConnect SD-WAN Pay Dividends for You?

The EdgeConnect SD-WAN platform helps financial services organizations address network shortcomings and enhance customer service in a rapidly changing environment. Contact us to learn more about implementing EdgeConnect to improve network performance, security, reliability and compliance. Let’s get those dividends flowing.